Student Channel

Twenty students were rewarded for their extra-curricular work at last night’s Student Success Awards 2016 ceremony.

Held at MediaCityUK, the event brought together industry partners, small and medium-sized enterprises, University staff and more to celebrate the fantastic work of our students in local, national and even international communities.

Martyn Willcock, a third year Business Management student, was the night’s big winner taking home both the Volunteer of the Year Award and Student of the Year award for his work in helping to reopen a swimming baths that is vital to the community of Haslingden in Rossendale.

The mature student wrote a business case and proposal which secured approximately £300,000 from Rossendale Borough Council to refurbish the leisure facility, before securing additional funding of over £160,000 to buy materials for the team of volunteers, including skilled trades people and professionals, who are working to reopen the baths in time for its 80th anniversary this August.

The Salford Parliamentors also scooped two awards, the Volunteering Team of the Year Award and Inter Faith Award. Hamza Patel, Ammar Karim Nazib and Oluwatope Bakare have taken part in this United Nations initiative, the aim of which is to benefit local communities. They have run a successful mentoring programme with students at Oasis Academy, MediaCityUK, and delivered sessions to address potential challenges facing young people in education.

Samuel Otigba, an MBA student from the Salford Business School, was named the Most Enterprising Student of the Year for the second year running. Not only has Samuel set up Gruuve, a social media app that gives users up-to-date information about social events and activities that their friends are involved in, he has also had his impact felt internationally by working in Jordan to boost entrepreneurship, knowledge and practice amongst young people.

He said: “I’m so happy to win the award, it’s an honour. I think events like this are good as they encourage entrepreneurship and not just entrepreneurs from the local area but also international students and it convinces more students to come to the University.”

The Social Enterprise Award went to Joshua Jones, a third-year Mechanical Engineering student who is the Team Director of the University’s first ever entry into the ‘Formula Student’ competition. Joshua and a team of mechanical engineering and business students are designing and building a Formula One car to compete against other universities in a race at Silverstone F1 track.

He said: “Winning the award was a nice pat on the back and just shows the University are supporting what we doing. Today we saw some really good stories of what people had done and the challenges they’ve had to overcome. It’s good for the team too to have that sort of recognition helps keep the momentum going.”

Other winners included Dominika Piasecka who won the Santander Internship Award, Tamara Karim who won the WBL/Placement Student of the Year Award; Alexandra Diaconescu who won the Student Host of the Year Award; Tanmay Barhale who won International Engagement Student of the Year; Georgi Manolov, Melissa Ahmed, Faizal Emam and Katie Sutton who all received Salford Advantage Awards having been out on placement during 2015, and Rosemen Ali and Daniel Cummins who were joint winners of the Inspiring Student Award.

There were also awards for people outside of the University with SP Energy Networks winning Employer of the Year for the opportunities they provide to students, and awards for Kieran Hughes, Ethan Holden and Brandon Couper-Phillips from University Technical College, MediaCityUK .

Huge congratulations go to all winners and nominees, and a huge thanks goes to those responsible for organising the event.